What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities
CVE-2025-43079: Local Privilege Escalation via qagent_uninstall.sh Qualys Cloud Agents
- Severity: medium (CVSS 6.3 v3.1)
- Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
- EPSS: 0.2% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
- Public exploit or detection template: none known
- Published: 2025-11-10 · updated 2026-10-07
- Weakness: CWE-426
Description
The Qualys Cloud Agent included a bundled uninstall script (qagent_uninstall.sh), specific to Mac and Linux supported versions that invoked multiple system commands without using absolute paths and without sanitizing the $PATH environment. If the uninstall script is executed with elevated privileges (e.g., via sudo) in an environment where $PATH has been manipulated, an attacker with root/sudo privileges could cause malicious executables to be run in place of the intended system binaries. This behavior can be leveraged for local privilege escalation and arbitrary command execution under elevated privileges.
Affected products
- Qualys Inc Qualys Agent: from 5.0 before 7.2.3; from 3.12 before 7.1.0; from 4.17 before 6.0.0; before 6.2.1; before 6.3.1; before 3.31.1-8 — fixed in 3.21.1-6, 3.31.1-8, 4.2.6, 5.0.2, 5.0.3, 6.0.0
How to fix
Upgrade to a fixed version: Qualys Inc Qualys Agent 3.21.1-6, 3.31.1-8, 4.2.6, 5.0.2. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.
References
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